Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/325

Rh church of the Carmine, for example, where the artist has depicted a naked figure shivering with the cold, besides many spirited and life-like forms, in other pictures. But, speaking generally, the second period did not attain to the perfection exhibited by the third, and of which we propose to speak in due time. For the present we have to occupy ourselves with the second, wherein—to speak first of the sculptors—the art made so decided an improvement on the manner of the first, as to leave but little remaining for the third to accomplish. The method adopted by the masters of the second period was so much more efficient, their treatment so much more natural and graceful, their drawing so much more accurate, their proportions so much more correct, that their statues began to assume the appearance of living men, and were no longer lifeless images of stone, as were those of the earlier day. Of this there will be found proof in the part we are now about to treat, wherein the works of the Sienese, Jacopo della Quercia, will be remarked as possessing more life and grace, with more correct design, and more careful finish; those of Filippo Brunelleschi exhibit a finer developement and play of the muscles, with more accurate proportions, and a more judicious treatment—remarks which are alike applicable to the works produced by the disciples of these masters. Still more was performed by Lorenzo Ghiberti, in his work of the gates of San Giovanni: fertility of invention, judicious arrangement, correct design, and admirable treatment, being all alike conspicuous in these wonderful productions, the figures of which seem to move and possess a living soul. Donato also lived at the same period, but respecting this master, I could not for some time determine whether I were not called on to place him in the third epoch, since his productions are equal to good works of antiquity;—certain it is, that if we assign him to the second period, we may safely affirm him to be the type and representative of all the other masters of that period; since he united within himself the qualities which were divided among the rest, and which must be sought among many, imparting to his figures a life, movement, and reality which enable them to bear comparison with those of later times—nay even, as I have said, with the ancients themselves.

Similar progress was made at the same time in painting,